Jaguar Land Rover confirms £600m investment plans in West Midlands
VEHICLE manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover has confirmed plans for a massive expansion of its production and research capabilities in the West Midlands.
The company said its decision to invest a further £600m into the region underlined its commitment to the West Midlands as a manufacturing centre.
The largest single investment has been made at the company’s Castle Bromwich plant, where over £400m has been spent in new and upgraded facilities to support the introduction of the all-new Jaguar XF.
Dr Ralf Speth, JLR CEO, said: “Jaguar Land Rover continues to demonstrate its unwavering support to the British automotive industry through sustained investments in advanced research, technology and innovation.
“This investment, made here in the heartland of our UK business operations, signals the confidence we have in this region to support the creation, engineering and manufacturing of ultra-low emission, premium British products, today and in the future.”
Amongst the most notable investments at the Castle Bromwich site will be a £320m state-of-the art aluminium bodyshop. This will complete the site’s transformation into a global centre of excellence for lightweight vehicle manufacturing, said the company. The new facility is also the largest single investment in the history of the Castle Bromwich site.
The launch of the new Jaguar XF completes a transformation in the Jaguar model range which has seen all its vehicles switch to all-aluminium production.
In addition to the new bodyshop, which is thought likely to resemble the facility installed at nearby Lode Lane for the production of the new XE saloon and its confirmed crossover, the F-Pace, JLR has invested £16m on a new blanker line which will allow the plant to turn coils of aluminium into ‘blank sheets’ that will be pressed into body panels and parts on a new Aida £50m press line which is currently under construction.
This line will feed in to the new £320m bodyshop, which is described as the most flexible and versatile of its kind within JLR. It will be capable of switching between Jaguar’s entire range of models mid-production. Finally £30m has been invested in significantly upgrading the trim and final assembly hall.
The application of this new industry-leading technology has resulted in the all-new XF being 80kg lighter than its nearest competitor and 190kgs lighter than the current model – a car that has redefined the company’s design strategy and gone on to become the most awarded Jaguar model in history.
In addition to the Castle Bromwich announcement, JLR has also confirmed plans that will double the operational footprint of its Advanced Design and Engineering Centre in Whitley.
The plans will see Whitley house an increasing number of highly-skilled product development engineers and support the company’s creation of high technology ultra-low emission vehicles for customers in 180 markets around the world.
To facilitate the expansion, JLR has assembled a significant landbank that has seen it acquire an additional 62 acres at Whitley, more than doubling the current 55-acre site and adding an area equivalent to the size of over 30 football pitches.
Dr Speth said: “Our expansion at Whitley will help ensure the sustainable growth of Jaguar Land Rover, with the development of ultra-low emission technologies. Design leadership, technical innovation and engineering excellence lie at the heart of this responsible business and we are committed to investing in the skills needed to continue this success into the future. Great people and great products are the essence of this great British company.”
The announcement of the Whitley expansion follows the start of construction of the £150m National Automotive Innovation Centre (NAIC), which will open at the University of Warwick in spring 2017.
The new centre will provide a state-of-the-art technology hub for JLR’s advanced research team and collaborative partners from the supply chain and academia. The NAIC is a partnership between the Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG), JLR, Tata Motors European Technical Centre (TMETC) and UK Government’s Higher Education Funding Council England (HEFCE).
Professor Lord Bhattacharyya, chairman and founder of WMG at the University of Warwick, welcomed the Whitley expansion saying: “WMG is a significant technology partner of Jaguar Land Rover and it is very clear to us that Jaguar Land Rover’s continuous investment in developing the technologies of the future outstrips others in the sector. The company’s role in developing the innovation infrastructure here will help the UK, and Jaguar Land Rover, remain at the forefront of global innovation in manufacturing and engineering for decades to come.”
